by J A Cummings
“If I need to say this again, there will be consequences,” he said. He rose in a sweep of black robes and stalked away, headed upstairs, no doubt to the young king’s room. Brastias and Bedivere followed.
When the group of loyalists was out of earshot, Bruis raised his tankard. “To our new masters,” he said. “May they rot and die.”
They all drank except Gawain, who sat in stoic silence at his father’s side. Kay, who was still at the table, looked down at his mug guiltily after having joined the toast. Owain fumed. Morgana made note of all of this. Every piece of knowledge was a tool.
Merlin let himself into Arthur’s room and stopped short when the light from the single candle revealed Griflet lying in the young king’s bed. A flash of hot, irrational anger burned through him, and he took one step forward before he could regain control. The young knight lifted his head from the pillow the two were sharing, and his mouth dropped open when he saw the furious druid.
“We had an agreement,” Merlin said, his voice rough and deep.
“I’m making sure he’s all right,” Griflet said. “If I lay this close, with my arm here, I can make certain he stays breathing. I think he was poisoned.”
It was a reasonable explanation, and although he wanted to rage, he bit back on his temper and said, “I’m sure he was poisoned.”
He went to lean over the king, lifting Arthur’s eyelids and feeling his pulse. He could sense the lingering effects of some sort of magical spell, but the source and intention were elusive and he could not divine them from the residue they left behind. He straightened with a long half-sigh, half-growl. Griflet looked up at him, his anxiety clear to see.
“Well?”
“Not poisoned,” Merlin advised him. “Enspelled. It was that witch Morgana. She has much stolen and illicit magic about her, and she’s stronger than she was the last time I saw her. She brought the mugs to us.”
“And you switched with the king,” Griflet reminded him. “If there was a spell involved, it was intended for you.”
“It was intended for one of us,” he allowed. “Morgana is clever - she would have known that I would distrust her, and she may have stayed a step ahead of me. I believe that the poison or potion, whichever it was, reached the intended target.”
He sat down on the side of the bed and watched Arthur as he slept. His breathing was shallow and quick, and his face was flushed and damp with perspiration. Merlin shook his head in dismay at his failure to protect him.
“Is there anything you can do to help him?” Griflet asked, anxiety in his voice.
“I don’t know. I’ll stay with him tonight. You may return to your own bed and sleep, Sir Griflet. There’s no need for you to stay.”
It was politely worded, but he knew that he had just been ordered to go. He left Arthur’s side reluctantly, but just as before, his sense of self-preservation was stronger than his dedication to his king. He said nothing as he left the room without a backward glance.
Merlin sat on the bed with his back against the headboard. He watched his king sleep, concerned about the way he was breathing and the fever he had. The druid conjured a dish of water and a cloth, and he used these to swab the young king’s brow and neck to cool him. It took hours, but the fever began to subside, and Arthur’s breathing regulated and became more normal, deep and regular like a proper sleeper’s. The druid was relieved. When the first rays of dawn painted the eastern sky, he closed his eyes and began to doze.
When Arthur awoke, he instantly regretted it. He felt as if some blacksmith had been using his cranium for an anvil, and the pounding was still echoing in his ears. His stomach churned and he scarcely reached the chamber pot in time to prevent a horrible mess on the floor. His eruption from the bed startled Merlin awake, and the druid set to work assembling an herbal remedy for the king’s nausea.
Arthur lay back down with a miserable groan, and his companion provided him with a vial of crushed herbs. “Just sniff this,” he directed. The king attempted to obey, but his guts objected violently to the scent and he pushed it away.
Merlin pressed his palm against Arthur’s forehead and pushed cooling energy into his body, soothing his headache and putting him back to sleep. The young man abandoned himself to his friend’s ministrations, and soon he was dozing again, but not peacefully.
Arthur dreamed.
In his dream, he was standing beside a fast-flowing stream in the dark. The full moon hung above his head, and mist rose from the water and crawled across the ground like a wounded ghost. Ahead of him, seated on a stone and facing a large stump that had been cut flat and pressed into use as a table, he saw his nephew, Gawain. Across from Gawain was Morgana. They were playing a game, casting bones and stones onto an elaborately carved board. As he approached, he recognized the outline of Britannia etched into the board. For every toss of the dice, Gawain would move a set of white markers around the map; when Morgana rolled the dice, she would counter with black markers.
Arthur approached. “Are we at war?”
Gawain looked up at Morgana. “Your move.”
The Queen of Rheged rolled her dice, and they turned into spiders and scurried off the map. Arthur leaped away from them, but Gawain did not react. Instead, he took his turn and sat back, looking at his aunt.
“Your move,” Gawain said.
Morgana’s spiders were rushing toward Arthur. They were growing in size, and he found that he could not move. Something was holding him rooted to the spot, and the spiders kept coming. They swarmed over his feet, growing and multiplying. They climbed his legs, chittering, mobbing him. He was covered to the waist with a thick carpet of crawling arachnids that resisted his every effort to push them way. He shuddered as they began to cover his torso and up his neck.
When the first one reached his lips, he jerked awake, sitting up and panting. Merlin was seated beside him, his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, concern on his face as the king panted and shook. He tried to speak to the druid, but his voice failed him, and he could only lie down again, too weak to sit up any longer.
He had never felt so sick.
Merlin looked down at him, aware that there was little to nothing he could do to help him if he wouldn’t accept the herbal remedy. He had no magical healing ability of his own, and he considered looking elsewhere for help, but he was loath to leave Arthur’s side.
Instead, he sat with his back against the headboard where he had been before, and he guided Arthur’s head onto his lap. The young king went willingly, letting Merlin stroke his sweat-damp hair while he clutched at the druid’s legs with desperate arms. Merlin made soothing sounds, as if he was holding a baby, and he continued with his gentle touch. Arthur closed his eyes and gave a wracking sigh that caught in his throat. Merlin took one of the king’s hands in one of his own, and Arthur clutched at him, clinging like a man afraid to die. It took several minutes, but finally Arthur fell asleep again.
Merlin looked down at the face of his companion. He was young and unlined, unscarred and unblemished. His beauty, even in his current state, was enough to make Merlin pause to take it in. He felt more for this youth than he should, and he knew it.
Love was a human emotion, and Merlin was not human. He should have had no ability to feel this. There should have been no reason for his dark soul to lighten when he saw the young king, and no mechanism should have been able to warm his cold heart. He was a killer, a monster, a devourer of souls… he had killed and consumed more humans than he could remember, and he should have been like his mother, seeing Arthur as only one in a long series of tools to be used on the path toward dominion. Love, this uncomfortable feeling in his chest, was a weakness, and it would impede what he had to do.
Arthur had a story that had to play out. Part of seeing that everything happened as it must would require Merlin to step aside and allow pain to reach Arthur, to allow him to be injured and hurt. He had to stop protecting him, had to stand by and watch as enemies assailed the young king’s heart and soul. The thought m
ade him uneasy, and he knew that it shouldn’t have. He should have looked at is as nothing more than applying another layer of paint to a stone axe he would use in a later battle. He was to keep him alive, but he had never been told to keep him happy.
Sitting here, though, with Arthur warm and vulnerable and beautiful in his arms, he couldn’t conceive of letting anyone or anything cause him pain or sorrow. He wanted to keep the king just this way, young and alive and not yet broken by the life he had to live. He wanted to wrap him in his arms and keep him forever.
It was foolish. It was the stupidest impulse he had ever had. His mother would be deeply annoyed with him if she knew, and in truth, he was deeply annoyed with himself. This feeling, these urges, ran completely counter to everything he was and should have been. It was a violation of everything he, as an incubus, had been born to do.
He knew what lay ahead in Arthur’s life. He had been saddled with the power of prophecy, and what he saw always came true. He had seen Arthur’s life from the moment of his birth straight through to the death that would come for him. He knew every twist along the way, every person who would help Arthur achieve the greatness they needed him to achieve, and every person who would bring him down again when his usefulness was through. He knew what would happen with Guinevere, with Gawain, with Morgana…
He closed his eyes. He had reached one of those junctures when he would have to step away and watch pain come to his king. He would do it, and he would hate it. He would obey his mother’s directive and the requirements of fate; but as he looked into the angelic face of the young man sleeping in his lap, he took slender comfort in knowing that the moment was not yet upon them. It was coming, and it was close, but for now he had quiet, and he had a whole and unashamed Arthur, and relative peace.
For now, it was enough.
It took hours, but Arthur finally was able to leave his bed and go out into the rest of the keep to face his friends and family. He walked into the great hall slowly, his eyes puffy and squinting against the headache that pounded behind them. Lot was seated on his throne, listening to a pair of his subjects arguing about ownership of a lamb, a subject that clearly bored him but which was of great consequence to the men before him. The newborn lamb at the center of the debate stood on uncertain legs before them. Morgause sat beside him, listening and sipping from a drinking horn. When Arthur entered the room, Sir Griflet, who was in the gallery, shouted, “The High King!”
The room went silent, and everyone knelt or bowed where they were. Arthur flushed, feeling profoundly uncomfortable and almost embarrassed. He held up his hand. “Please, as you were.” As everyone returned to their seats, he nodded to King Lot. “I apologize for interrupting. Please continue as if I wasn’t here.”
On Lot’s other side, Sir Gawain sat in a throne of his own, lower than his parents’ but still an exalted seat. He smiled and nodded at Arthur.
“Welcome, King Arthur,” Lot said. “I trust you’re feeling better?”
“Somewhat,” he answered with a rueful smile.
“The High King tasted uisge beatha for the first time last night. It tasted him back.” The room erupted into laughter, most of it mocking. Lot smirked victoriously.
Arthur took a seat in the gallery beside Sir Griflet. “It is a very stout spirit,” he admitted.
A lady’s hand appeared on his shoulder, and he turned to look at the woman sitting behind him. It was Morgana, smiling sweetly, sitting beside Sir Owain. “I have something I can give you for the headache, my brother,” she said. “You need only come with me to my rooms.”
Griflet turned to Arthur, clearly waiting for his response. The king whispered, “My thanks, but perhaps after court is ended.”
She nodded and patted his shoulder before sitting back. He was warmed by the sisterly affection she had been showing him, and he hoped that this was how things would always be between them. He hoped, despite his long stay at Caer Gai and the separation that had taken place between himself and his blood kin, that they would be able to welcome one another with the love and respect that siblings should have. He wanted that desperately.
Lot turned back to the warring shepherds before him. “Since neither of you can provide proof of ownership, and since the lamb in question was destined to be raised for the slaughter, I will purchase the lamb and give you each a silver stater in compensation. We will have lamb with dinner tonight.” The men bowed to him, not necessarily satisfied but mollified enough. The king reached into his own belt pouch and withdrew the coins in question, flipping one to each man. “Now go and take more care with your fences and your sheep and stop bothering me.” As the shepherds withdrew, Lot told his retainers, “Add this lamb to the flock.”
A soldier took the shepherds out one door while another soldier took the lamb out a second door. The little animal bleated in the man’s arms as he carried it away.
Morgause looked into her drinking horn and flicked at something with her fingernail. “What is next? Not more sheep, I hope.”
The herald said, “A messenger from Craig Phadrig.”
“Send him in.”
They expected a man with weathered features, a typical courier used to life out of doors, but instead a raven-haired beauty with large hazel eyes came into the room. She was garbed in the particolored wool fabric of the Western Isles, and in her hands she held a sprig of mistletoe. On her head was a garland made of dried vervain flowers.
Morgause looked intrigued but respectful. “Welcome, Lady Druid.”
The woman did not bow, but she turned to face the queen. “Deep peace to you, my lady.”
“And to you.”
Lot folded his hands over his stomach. “What brings you to our court from Craig Phadrig? You are dressed as a member of the Western Isles clans, not as a resident of Inbhir Nis.”
“I am of the Western Isles, and I bring word to you, King Lot of Lothian and Orkney, that the king of the Men of Gododdin has died. His sons, Bran and Cyngar, have split the territory between them. Cyngar rules the west, now called Ystrad Clud, and Bran the east, now called Brynaich. My grove has brokered this peace between them to prevent warfare in the kingdom of the Men of Gododdin. King Bran and King Cyngar send their names to you as notice that they are here, and that they will accept your fealty and homage when they arrive at Din Eidyn to take your land.”
Lot laughed in her face. “They will never take Lothian. Tell them that I will never give them my vow of fealty or homage.”
The druidess drew herself up. “They will ask why not.”
“Because I have already given it to my lord the High King of all Britannia.” He gestured to Arthur, who tried to look less bedraggled.
She looked surprised. “This is a boy.”
“This is King Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, and our new High King.”
The druidess examined him for a moment, then she bowed her head to him. “Your Majesty.”
Arthur rose. “Kings Bran and Cyngar are marching south, I take it?”
“Their plans depend upon the answer from King Lot. Now I have that answer, but I do not have the kings’ decision. My grove will do its best to prevent bloodshed and warfare, sire.”
“What is your name, my lady?”
“I am called Réidh, my lord. I have also been called Ragnell.”
Gawain spoke, clearly entranced. “Well met, lady.”
Lot smirked. “Eat with us tonight, and we will send you back to your kings with our good greetings in the morning.”
Ragnell turned to face Arthur. “Have you any words for my kings, Your Majesty?”
“Only that I would rather meet them as long-lost brothers in a feast hall than as enemies across a battlefield.” He nodded to her. “Tell them that I offer my friendship, if they will have it.”
She bowed to him. “I will.” She turned back to Lot. “And I accept your gracious invitation.”
They dined that night on tender lamb and roasted turnips, fare that was hearty if a bit plain for a royal
table. Arthur enjoyed the simplicity of it. Sometimes the trappings of royalty were tedious.
The meal was eaten in an atmosphere of peace and calm, with a harper performing in the corner and the people around the table conversing like good companions. Arthur’s appetite had somewhat returned, and he was able to enjoy the food that was put before him. He watched the faces around the table. Sir Brastias and Sir Bedivere were in a laughing conversation with one of Lot’s warriors, and Sir Griflet was listening at his uncle’s side. Merlin sat with Ragnell, but she spent most of her attention on Sir Gawain, who sat on her other side, and whose entire focus was upon the lovely druidess. Lot and Morgause sat at opposite ends of the long table, the king with his best friend Bruis to his left and Arthur to his right. Morgause sat with Morgana and Owain on either side of her. It was all very civilized.
When the meal was over, one of the warriors called for uisge beatha, and Arthur became the butt of subtle jokes that he chose not to acknowledge. He waved off the drink when it was offered to him, and the porter went away smiling.
Ragnell turned from talking to Gawain and looked at him. Her striking beauty was so great that it made her seem almost otherworldly, and it was clear that she had his nephew completely in her power. She smiled at Arthur and nodded to him when she caught him looking, and instead of showing any embarrassment at being caught, he nodded back and raised his mead to her. She lifted her cup to him, and they drank. Gawain noted the exchange with a jealous frown, but Ragnell turned back to speak to him, so he was mollified.
Arthur wondered what Guinevere was doing, and if she was well. He missed her, and lamented to himself that a date for their wedding had not been set. He had supposed it would be at Beltane, but his supposition had never been confirmed. That date was nearly two months away, and he wondered if he was supposed to be thinking about preparations, or if that was something that would fall to King Leodegrance as his betrothed’s guardian. He had fighting season coming, and he needed to set his mind there.
